


Wicked games

by Lilly_White



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 22:45:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1705322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilly_White/pseuds/Lilly_White
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tifa's never been very good at sleeping alone, since it means that she has to deal with what's in her head. And Vincent, well, Vincent never sleeps anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wicked games

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song Wicked Games, by The Weeknd.

• • •

It isn’t something he’s used to, a woman’s mouth against his. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do with his hands, because even though it’s been thirty years since someone was this close to him, he can still remember the strict physical configuration, her scent, her shape, her voice – and he’s lost without those vital landmarks. This is another body, another person, and what ties them together is born of another type of desperation entirely.

She’s crying and he pulls away a little, looking down at her creased brow, her trembling lips, her eyes like cracks in stones full of red-tinted crystals. Her suffering is the only appreciable thing about her, the only thing he can entirely relate to, and perhaps that’s why he’s singled her out among the others – perhaps that’s why he doesn’t flinch away from her touch. Her fingers are cold with neglect and he knows what she wants, what she needs him to fill her with, because he needs it, too. Only, he’s always thought that it was slightly cavalier to exchange such things when there is no love, when there is nothing but mutual melancholy as justification.

He’s tried to keep the memories at bay but upon the slightest contact they come rushing back, the old jealousy, his ribs like the pillars of a long-abandoned temple as he sees her before him again. His first love. His only love. Perhaps no one is capable of loving more than once, in the end. That’s what he believes. He also believes that he’ll manage it again, because if he didn’t believe both ends of the contradiction, he’d have nothing to define himself with, and nothing to define his future either.

_Future._ What a romantic notion. Possibilities, potentials and proclivities. Tifa’s hands are on his gauntlet, the only gold that his greatest love ever left on his hand. He wonders what Cloud gave her, if he gave her anything. What she has, what she holds onto when she allows herself to hope that there can be a future. An alternate reality. A fiction, in which she might be allowed to live, if she plays her cards right.

His skin is dark and wrinkled under the gold, a monstrous thing, but she doesn’t shy away from it. She takes it, presses his plum-coloured palm against her cheek, lets those abnormally long nails press against her skin. He frowns; another fundamental difference. He’d never allow Lucrecia to see the uglier parts of him, much less touch them, even though she’s partly responsible for them. She covered them in gold, anyway, didn’t she? Covered up her mistakes, her own ugliness that he’d swallowed without flinching – you take it all in, don’t you, when you love someone that much? And he’d even asked for more, because he didn’t care, he didn’t care that he would probably go insane if he didn’t at least try to protect some part of himself, to prevent her from covering all of him with her gold-plated love and her sad smiles.

His eyes trick him into seeing chestnut hair and a pearl necklace, ghostly opalescence glowing around Tifa’s neck like some sinister scar. And as though in defiance of his own memories, of his enslavement to that cursed woman, he leans in and bites that foreign throat, tastes foreign skin. Tifa sighs against him and the sound of her is kindling something long forgotten in him, the desire that had burned in his veins whenever he caught a glimpse of those ankles under Lucrecia’s billowy skirt hem, whenever she had looked up at him with those big, sad eyes.

She had been pathetic, in a way. Next to her, Tifa is alive in every possible sense of the word, and that is the main difference. There is fiery life in the way she kisses him, in the way her hands travel across his chest as though they’re already familiar with his body. She doesn’t resist, like Lucrecia did. She doesn’t hesitate, because she knows it’s pointless to wait for something they both want. It’s only wasting time. It’s only pretending that there’s already something between them, when they’re only just starting to get to know one another. It’s only playing dead, when they each have a monstrous thing inside them, banging against the walls, begging release.

And Vincent has had enough of playing dead.

The truth is, they’re both tired of those games that must be played, those mazes that must be figured out, those morals that must be respected in order to finally have someone in their grasp. They’re in different mazes now, the maze of each other’s body, and they don’t care about anything else than finding the centre, finding each other out. Vincent lets her unfasten his cloak, and she’s pressing him up against a wall, contemplating how strangely diminished he is without it. She unwinds the red bands from his hair, and his rebellious black strands mingle with her own as she kisses his cold mouth, her tongue branding his with heat. She’s holding onto his chest with fistfuls of his shirt, and he grasps her wrists, smiling down at her softly.

“I’m not going to rip it, don’t worry,” she whispers, and his smile only widens. It’s the first time she sees him smile, and she’s momentarily touched, allowing a softer sentiment into their otherwise mindless exchange.

“Do you really think I care about that?” he tells her, then his hands have moved and there are buttons clattering over the floor like hail, tickling Tifa’s bare feet.

“I don’t know what you care about,” Tifa whispers back, her breath caught. She’s only acting on intuition; she’d noticed how he looked at her, how he lingered behind in empty rooms when all the others hurried on, how he would always find some excuse to remain in her company. But in reality she still doesn’t understand why he would be interested in her, why he accepted her when she barged into his room in the middle of the night with no other excuse than insomnia.

But it would not do to tell her that it was her loneliness that made her so irresistible, that she was like a mirror image, a younger version of himself. Vincent only gazes at her for a moment, still wearing that enigmatic smile, before pushing against her, walking her towards the bed, thighs pressing against hers as he forces her to walk backwards. She’s grinning as she stumbles, losing balance, then she’s on her back in the plump mattress and he’s standing at the foot of the bed, tugging his shirt out of his beltline and taking it off. She looks at the scars covering his body – he looks half wild as he stands there gazing at her hungrily, his loose hair covering his shoulders.

She should be afraid. But the fact is, she’s way past fear.

The fact is, she doesn’t care what happens to her. As long as she isn’t left alone.

He kneels, the mattress sinking under his weight, and his hands are on her joint knees, pulling them apart as she playfully resists him. It thrills her to see that bestial hand on her smooth white skin, and when he trails his claws along the inside of her thigh she shivers, her back arching up. They are animals – lonely, wretched souls, seeking comfort in something physical, someone whose warmth they can actually touch for once, rather than being satisfied by endless promises. There is nothing sincere about words, nothing sincere about intentions. The only reality is what they can come into contact with, and they are giddy with rare sensation as Vincent slides his hips between her thighs, looming over her, fulfilling his promise of satisfaction. She grinds herself against him, shameless, and the sharpness of his canines on her lips is making her light-headed – she reaches down, tugging at his belts, and there is a tinkle of metal as she undoes the buckles one by one.

When he penetrates her he hisses with pleasure, and she digs her head into the mattress, biting the arm she’s flung over her head in order to stop from crying out. They’ve stopped thinking. They’ve stopped trying to find reasons, because this – being full of feeling, being full of heat rather than the cold dread that hangs from their ribs like icicles – it justifies itself. She’s still got her clothes on; he’s fucking her with her underwear pulled to one side, careless, far too driven by desire to take the time to undo her suspenders one by one and slide her skirt down those endless legs. She decides to do it herself when she manages to fight him off, rolling over him so that she might straddle him – she slides her suspenders off her shoulders, slowly, toying with him as he gazes up at her. She’s wearing a coy little smile, and there’s nothing shy about her at all, nothing decent in the slightest. Vincent pushes himself up when he decides he can’t take any more, kissing her roughly as he rips away those damn suspenders, and her arms come up in anticipation, rails along which he slides her tank top, up, up and off. Finally off.

Her slyness is addictive – it’s a testimony to her carelessness, and he finds himself responding to it, hands roaming over too much naked skin, far more than he’s ever had the luxury to explore. But every single inch that he claims screams defiance, as though he were spitting at his past self, the man who never forced anything, the man who thought he didn’t deserve it – didn’t deserve anything – and when Tifa pushes him down again he clasps her, holds onto her, asserts his own desires as he kisses her long and deep. He wants this, and for once, he’s letting himself take it instead of wondering, does she want me with the same intensity? Does she feel the same way? He still remembers those pathetic litanies of morality, the ones that stopped him from doing something when he saw Lucrecia with him, the other man, the sick doctor. I can’t come between them, he remembered thinking to himself. I can’t do that to her. Can’t, can’t, can’t. But now he’s coming between two people, he’s even being encouraged to, and he responds just as wantonly because he can. There’s no real reason to stop, just as there was no real reason at the time. He’s only more lucid this time. He’s only more aware of how much he lost, how much he might still lose if he holds onto his fucking useless principles.

When she reaches orgasm she straightens, her arms out as though electrified, hips rolling back and forth as she rides the waves of bliss, her throat bare as she tilts her head back and cries out. He almost reaches up to clamp a hand over her mouth, because the others are in the rooms all around them and it wouldn’t do to let them hear – but if she’s willing to let them know then he should be, too. So he simply watches her, lower lip caught between his teeth as he lets his hands weigh on her hips, taking in every rotation, absorbing her rhythm. She’s exhausted afterwards, curling in again as though she has to recover, huddling against him, and they roll over again so that he can take over. He’s gentler this time, because he’s distracted by her expression – her lips are curled in raw, red smile, and her cheeks are plump with a happiness that he’s never seen before in her. There’s no frown marring her forehead, no pain in her eyes as she looks up at him, and it’s heartbreaking, it’s fucking heartbreaking that the only way she could reach this state is through this – wringing it out through hard, mindless sex.

She only frowns again when she realizes how gentle he’s being, and she bucks her hips against him, not wanting him to stain their exchange with sentiment when it had been perfect until now. And Vincent follows her lead with only a slight hesitation, pinning her down, making her smile again. When he reaches his own climax she can’t get her eyes off of his face either, how his carefully constructed expression breaks inwards, into folds and tensions and an open mouth, groaning with something he can’t contain. She kisses him then, so that she might swallow those rare syllables, as if they’re so precious that she can’t do otherwise than gather them up and save them.

They’ve both chiseled away each other’s stoicism, and when they collect themselves, holding onto one another and breathing softly in the dark, they feel dangerously naked. Vincent moves away first, falling next to her onto his back: neither is willing to indulge in something as inappropriately sentimental as a post-coital cuddle. The gunslinger watches, still panting, as Tifa sits up and turns her back to him, reaching to get her top from the floor. Her naked back is swallowed in white cotton as she wriggles into it, pulling it down over her breasts, and then she’s on her feet again while he’s still wondering what his name is, what year it is – she walks around to his side of the bed, looking down at him with a smile that is just as enigmatic as his had been, when she’d walked in here asking him what he cared about. For a moment he wonders if one of them should apologize, but he’s not sure that’s what she’s waiting for. In fact he has no idea what she’s waiting for as she looks down at him like that.

He sits up, pushing his hair over one shoulder distractedly; he’s never liked to have it loose, it gets everywhere. It’s when she loses her smile that he realizes why she’s looking at him; she wants him to see, to understand her. To understand why. He returns her gaze, effortlessly, and something passes between them – a burning empathy, an acceptance of some kind. She nods at him, a hand on the door handle, and Vincent almost smiles again.

“Are you going to be able to sleep, now?”

She grins back at him, though she’s far less cheeky this time.

“I think so.”

“Good.”

• • •

When Avalanche reunites at the inn’s canteen for breakfast, Tifa notices that Vincent has sewn his buttons back on; he isn’t missing a single one. He notices her staring when he sits at the table with his usual mug of black coffee and nothing else. He seems amused, but in that private, inexpressive way of his that only a few people can detect. She wonders if it’s true that he never sleeps at all, and whether it took him all night to get the buttons back on. Perhaps she’ll ask him. In the meantime, she settles down next to him with her hot chocolate and slices of buttered bread, and when Cloud and Aeris sit down in front of them, it isn’t as hard to look at them, to endure their laughter and that intimate way they have of glancing at one another. Like sex without touching, those gazes are. How does Cloud think she can’t be affected by that?

“I think there were people having too much of a good time last night,” Yuffie’s moaning loudly as she munches on her cereal, “I couldn’t even get a wink of sleep until 3am!”

Vincent looks up at this, his expression set in stone. “Yes,” he remarks, “Quite indecent.”

Tifa’s trying very hard not to snort. Cloud speaks up blithely; “Well, this is Costa del Sol, isn’t it? You’ve got to expect some debauchery.”

Aeris giggles, prude and innocent, but this time Tifa isn’t getting murderous impulses at the mere sound of that childish tinkering. Vincent moves his knee under the table, surreptitiously pressing his thigh against hers, as if he doesn’t notice he’s doing it, and the barmaid smiles to herself as she sips her chocolate. If Cloud had noticed that smile, he would’ve known something was up – only, Cloud never notices anything. And this time, this time… it suits her very well.

• • •


End file.
